GIS Education News Weekly: Old Open Content, Community College Action, Mountain Bike Map

GITTA (Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance) is a platform offering e-learning content as Open Educational Resources (OER). A pool of over 40 e-learning lessons covers the following thematic areas: GI Systems, Data Capture, Data Management, Spatial Modeling, Spatial Analysis, and Cartographic Presentation. Content is in large parts multi-lingual, with English, German, and French materials. Additionally 15 CartouCHe lessons on multimedia and internet cartography are available via GITTA website. You need only to subscribe to the GITTA newsletter to receive a full access link.

I had not.

[The content] was originally developed by a consortium of ten institutes at seven Swiss universities and released as open content under the creative commons license.

Apparently this dates back to 2006. I'd be curious if today's educators will find this useful.

[Virginia] Cleaveland decided to fix the problem. She unveiled GalbraithMountainMap.com on June 6. Her website helped her earn the master's degree in environmental education she received Saturday, June 14, during Western graduation ceremonies.

The problem to be solved? Updated trails conditions on the mountain. The map took a year and a half and help from other to create. It's based on Google Maps.

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology – Geospatial Technology. This certificate requires 12 credit hours of study. The program is geared to Black Hills area professionals who seek to expand their skill sets or retrain for a career in gathering, storing, processing and delivering geographic information.

Proceedings of Open Source Education Symposium Available

The third Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium (OGRS) was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 to 13 June 2014. The proceedings are available.

Space Station to Host Remote Sensing Research

The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) has announced grant awards for five projects focused on remote sensing and Earth observation. These awards stem from the CASIS Request for Proposals (RFP) “Remote Sensing From the International Space Station.” CASIS is the nonprofit organization managing research onboard the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory.

ASU Gets NGA Research Grant on Climate Change and National Security

Arizona State University (ASU) was selected for a competitive five-year award of $20 million by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to launch a research partnership, effective June 1, 2014, to explore approaches for anticipating and mitigating national security risks associated with climate change.

Hunter College Open Source GIS Course

One week course, $1800 covers QGIS, PostGIS, R and more. Are these sorts of courses a new revenue stream for colleges and trainers?

Have Students Join DigitalGlobe for some CitSci to Idenitfy Invasive Species

Starting with the island of Kauai, we want to pinpoint the location of some of the worst invasive weeds, but we need your help! If you would like to volunteer your time to support this mission, please visit DigitalGlobe’s Tomnod platform to join other eco-volunteers in combing through aerial images of Kauai ...

Esri offered a map, Trimble its SketchUp software and NASA the chance to build a CubeSat (APB). I have some suggestions to make story maps like these more valuable: (1) less text and a more infographic sort of look, (2) embeddability, (3) clearer navigation through the content (I see "1" but it's not clear how to get to "2" on a small screen).

Accelerated Certificate in GIS at Hawaii Community College

Beginning this August, Hawai‘i Community College (Hawai‘i CC) will offer a new set of accelerated, online, for-credit classes that will lead to credential certificates.

That's great. I wonder if any representatives provided input as to what skills should be taught. I wonder if the curriculum links to the GTCM. I wonder if there are details on the credential? I could not find any.